Growing up in Troubles increased suicide risk

People who grew upduring the worst years of the conflict in Northern Ireland are at a far greater risk of suicide, it has emerged.

A study published today has found that the overall rate of suicide in the North doubled in the decade following the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

Research carried out at Queen’s University in Belfast focused on a cohort of children and young people who grew up in the North during the 1970s, the worst years of violence. The group was found to have the highest and most rapidly increasing suicide rates and accounted for the upward trend in suicide following the 1998 agreement.

A study of the death registration data over the last 40 years found that the overall suicide rate rose from 8.6 per 10,000 of the population in 1998 to 16 per 100,000 by 2010.

Prof Mike Tomlinson from Queen’s School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work, said the rise in suicide rates in the decade from 1998 to 2008 coincided with the move from conflict to peace in the North.

He said the increase in suicide rates could be attributed to a complex range of social and psychological factors, including the growth in social isolation, poor mental health arising from the experience of conflict and the greater political stability of the past decade.

Prof Tomlinson said the transition to peace meant that cultures of externalised aggression were no longer socially or politically acceptable.